Tuesday, 24 January 2012

SIX BABIES AND A NAIL IN THE HEAD

I thought I’d continue the trend this week of hard to believe stories in the press, because the trough is simply too deep. This time my disbelief stretches from Afghanistan to Illinois. Can you imagine the treasure trove of inconceivable tales between those two points? It boggles the mind really.

The first story involves a man in Illinois who accidentally got shot in the head with a nail gun – as you do – while he was working in his workshop. The kicker, after this event, he didn’t realize that a nail was lodged in his skull. Apparently despite a small cut on his head from the gun itself, he had no idea there was a nail in his brain until he started feeling nauseous the next day. I’ve got to stop here. Maybe it’s me, but if I’m even in the same vicinity of a nail gun, I’m flinching slightly just because of the words, nail and gun. How one doesn’t feel a nail piercing their head and lodging itself in their brain is beyond me.

Apparently the doctors that performed the two-hour surgery on the man said that while there are pain sensitive nerves on a person’s skull, there are none inside the brain. Yeah. I didn’t buy that either. It’s a nail, in your head! Did you not feel that? I feel it when the King falls over if he’s two rooms away– it’s a mother thing. I’m certainly going to feel a long sharp nail impaling my head. I suppose the positive conclusion is that nail-in-the-skull man is fine, feeling great, and I quote, “remembers everything." Except the nail going into his head. Sorry, I’ll stop now.

The second unbelievable story involves a 24-year-old woman in Afghanistan. In her case, she went to the hospital to give birth to what she thought was a single baby, to be informed that she was about to give birth to six children. YES, SIX children. Can you imagine digesting that little gem of information? 'Yes Mam, you will have to push not just once, but…six times...oh, and buy more diapers.' Forget it, I’d turn right back around and get the hell out of there. Labor be damned.

Due to the fact that the woman didn’t receive any fertility treatment – it’s rare in Afghanistan and they have one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world – she had no clue she had so many babies inside of her. I’ve been pregnant and The King was not a small baby, so I was pretty darn aware he was in there. I felt his legs, his arms, and his ample behind pushing up against my rib cage. And I can tell you this, if there were SIX Kings in there, I would’ve known about it. Or at least would have hightailed it to the doctor telling him that my belly was growing to the size of a hot air balloon and I mysteriously felt 12 feet pushing into my bladder. But hey, that’s me; I’m super self-aware.

The mother in question is reportedly in good health but exhausted. I bet. Labor of one child is tiring. Labor to produce six, I’m thinking you are ready to book yourself into a facility that gives out fuzzy slippers, Valium and lavender eye pillows. Okay, clearly not something you’re going to find in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, but maybe one day.